Four global indices accessing civil liberties and economy¶

In May 2022, Reporters without Borders published their annual results comparing the level of press freedom enjoyed by journalists and media in 180 countries and territories. Several news agencies in my country (Greece) criticized its placement (pos. 108), a substantial drop from the 2021 70th position. To cross-validate the results, I searched for other global indices created by non-governmental organizations assessing the condition of political rights and civil liberties around the world.

The four indices presented below are:

The World Press Freedom Index by
Reporters without Borders
(press_2021.csv, press_2022.csv)
The Freedom in the World annual report by
the Freedom House
Aggregate_Category_and_Subcategory_Scores_FIW_2003-2022.xlsx
The Rule of Law Index by
the World Justice Project
FINAL_2021_wjp_rule_of_law_index_HISTORICAL_DATA_FILE.xlsx
The Corruption Perceptions Index by
the Transparency International movement
CPI2021_GlobalResults&Trends.xlsx
Combined Results Table

By comparing these four indices, I am hoping to find similar trends pertaining to human rights in each country.

World Press Freedom Index by RSF¶

Who Published It?¶

The World Press Freedom Index is published annually by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an international non-profit and non-governmental organization founded in 1985 in Montpellier (France) by four journalists. RSF's stated mission is safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It assists journalists at risk, training them in digital and physical security, and campaigning to raise public awareness of abuse against journalists securing their safety and liberty. It has consultive status with the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the International Organization of Francophonie.

Scoring Methodology¶

The index's ranking is based on a score ranging from 0 to 100, assigned to each country or territory, with 100 representing the best possible score (the highest possible level of press freedom). It is calculated on the basis of two components:

  • a quantitative tally of abuses against journalists in connection with their work, and against media outlets
  • a qualitative analysis of the situation in each country or territory based on the responses of press freedom specialists (including journalists, researchers, academics and human rights defenders) to an RSF questionnaire available in 23 languages.

Each country or territory's score is evaluated using five contextual indicators: political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context and safety.

The organization's main page is https://rsf.org/en and you can read World Press Freedom Index presentation, along with its analyses and methodology.

Data Preparation¶

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 180 entries, 0 to 179
Data columns (total 8 columns):
 #   Column        Non-Null Count  Dtype  
---  ------        --------------  -----  
 0   Pos.          180 non-null    int64  
 1   Countries     180 non-null    object 
 2   Global score  180 non-null    float64
 3   Score pol.    180 non-null    float64
 4   Score eco.    180 non-null    float64
 5   Score legis.  180 non-null    float64
 6   Score soc.    180 non-null    float64
 7   Score secu.   180 non-null    float64
dtypes: float64(6), int64(1), object(1)
memory usage: 11.4+ KB
Pos. Countries Global score Score pol. Score eco. Score legis. Score soc. Score secu.
0 1 Norway 92.65 94.89 90.38 92.23 93.71 92.03
1 2 Denmark 90.27 94.34 83.67 89.18 91.17 92.97
2 3 Sweden 88.84 91.96 87.66 90.27 90.18 84.14
3 4 Estonia 88.83 91.11 81.97 87.87 90.00 93.20
4 5 Finland 88.42 90.40 82.03 86.64 90.77 92.26
Pos.             0
Country          0
Global Score     0
Political        0
Economic         0
Legislation      0
Sociocultural    0
Safety           0
dtype: int64
scalerank featurecla labelrank sovereignt sov_a3 adm0_dif level type admin adm0_a3 ... region_un subregion region_wb name_len long_len abbrev_len tiny homepart filename geometry
0 1 Admin-0 country 6 Albania ALB 0 2 Sovereign country Albania ALB ... Europe Southern Europe Europe & Central Asia 7 7 4 -99 1 ALB.geojson POLYGON ((20.06396 42.54727, 20.10352 42.52466...
1 1 Admin-0 country 5 Czech Republic CZE 0 2 Sovereign country Czech Republic CZE ... Europe Eastern Europe Europe & Central Asia 10 14 8 -99 1 CZE.geojson POLYGON ((14.80937 50.85898, 14.89580 50.86138...
2 3 Admin-0 country 6 Finland FI1 1 2 Country Aland ALD ... Europe Northern Europe Europe & Central Asia 5 13 5 5 -99 ALA.geojson MULTIPOLYGON (((20.61133 60.04067, 20.60342 60...
3 3 Admin-0 country 6 Andorra AND 0 2 Sovereign country Andorra AND ... Europe Southern Europe Europe & Central Asia 7 7 4 5 1 AND.geojson POLYGON ((1.70605 42.50332, 1.67852 42.49668, ...
4 1 Admin-0 country 4 Austria AUT 0 2 Sovereign country Austria AUT ... Europe Western Europe Europe & Central Asia 7 7 5 -99 1 AUT.geojson POLYGON ((16.95312 48.59883, 16.94883 48.58857...

5 rows × 65 columns

20
{'Bosnia-Herzegovina': ['Bosnia and Herzegovina', 'The Gambia'],
 'Brunei': ['Brunei Darussalam', 'Federated States of Micronesia'],
 'Cabo Verde': ['Cape Verde', 'Macao'],
 'Congo-Brazzaville': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 'Democratic Republic of Congo': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo',
                                  'Republic of Congo'],
 'Eswatini': ['Swaziland', 'Russian Federation'],
 'Gambia': ['The Gambia', 'Guam'],
 'Guinea Bissau': ['Guinea-Bissau', 'Nauru'],
 'Haïti': ['Haiti', 'Kiribati'],
 'Ivory Coast': ["Côte d'Ivoire", 'Haiti'],
 'Laos': ['Lao PDR', 'Barbados'],
 'Maldives': ['Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'Mauritius': ['Nauru', 'Haiti'],
 'Morocco / Western Sahara': ['Western Sahara', 'Morocco'],
 'North Korea': ['Republic of Korea', 'Northern Mariana Islands'],
 'North Macedonia': ['Macedonia', 'New Caledonia'],
 'OECS': ['Federated States of Micronesia'],
 'Russia': ['Russian Federation', 'Brunei Darussalam'],
 'Seychelles': [],
 'South Korea': ['Republic of Korea', 'Dem. Rep. Korea']}
4
{'Maldives': ['Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'Mauritius': ['Nauru', 'Saint-Martin'],
 'OECS': ['Federated States of Micronesia'],
 'Seychelles': []}
/tmp/ipykernel_9188/508993371.py:10: UserWarning: Boolean Series key will be reindexed to match DataFrame index.
  temp = press_index_prev[press_index.Country == 'Morocco'].copy()
(181, 3)

Worldwide Results¶

2022 World Press Freedom Index
Pos. Country Global Score Political Economic Legislation Sociocultural Safety
1 Norway 92.65 94.89 90.38 92.23 93.71 92.03
2 Denmark 90.27 94.34 83.67 89.18 91.17 92.97
3 Sweden 88.84 91.96 87.66 90.27 90.18 84.14
4 Estonia 88.83 91.11 81.97 87.87 90.00 93.20
5 Finland 88.42 90.40 82.03 86.64 90.77 92.26
6 Ireland 88.30 89.24 79.08 85.09 92.50 95.58
7 Portugal 87.07 91.86 77.41 84.21 93.14 88.73
8 Costa Rica 85.92 81.62 72.96 87.72 92.50 94.78
9 Lithuania 84.14 87.01 72.16 84.46 89.71 87.37
10 Liechtenstein 84.03 80.36 68.78 84.74 89.80 96.46
11 New Zealand 83.54 90.15 75.26 74.78 89.75 87.76
12 Jamaica 83.35 74.85 71.94 82.46 95.00 92.52
13 Seychelles 83.33 80.45 69.13 85.31 90.25 91.50
14 Switzerland 82.72 90.00 68.37 80.99 88.33 85.92
15 Iceland 82.69 86.21 65.56 82.68 87.50 91.50
16 Germany 82.04 87.03 80.07 87.08 89.47 66.58
17 Timor-Leste 81.89 85.45 68.71 85.96 75.67 93.65
18 Namibia 81.84 72.97 69.80 82.98 91.60 91.84
19 Canada 81.74 82.27 71.17 80.26 92.00 82.99
20 Czech Republic 80.54 79.66 61.56 84.21 88.44 88.81
21 Luxembourg 79.81 82.94 66.33 72.93 88.71 88.14
22 Latvia 79.17 78.96 64.58 80.89 87.36 84.06
23 Belgium 78.86 75.03 71.22 79.30 87.40 81.35
24 United Kingdom 78.71 80.57 72.75 76.63 84.29 79.33
25 Trinidad and Tobago 78.68 73.94 67.86 74.56 84.50 92.52
26 France 78.53 79.85 67.86 86.51 89.38 69.05
27 Slovakia 78.37 71.44 67.98 82.02 86.38 84.01
28 Netherlands 77.93 86.30 82.86 87.28 86.10 47.09
29 Argentina 77.28 76.36 51.53 90.68 85.75 82.06
30 Dominican Republic 76.90 71.52 62.24 85.96 92.00 72.79
31 Austria 76.74 77.82 61.43 78.95 81.20 84.29
32 Spain 76.71 72.73 63.38 82.16 81.89 83.40
33 Bhutan 76.46 78.79 62.24 70.39 77.00 93.88
34 Guyana 76.41 70.06 67.76 75.61 81.40 87.21
35 South Africa 75.56 75.96 62.59 84.36 82.50 72.39
36 Cape Verde 75.37 72.55 62.76 77.98 75.40 88.16
37 Côte d'Ivoire 74.46 74.89 58.45 75.94 81.43 81.60
38 Taiwan 74.08 74.78 51.88 79.01 77.69 87.02
39 Australia 73.77 77.17 63.44 64.18 84.17 79.88
40 Moldova 73.47 70.15 47.83 83.00 85.88 80.48
41 Burkina Faso 73.12 78.99 67.69 75.58 87.83 55.52
42 United States 72.74 72.99 59.33 77.32 81.43 72.63
43 South Korea 72.11 71.15 55.31 72.81 79.80 81.50
44 Uruguay 72.03 70.30 49.32 83.63 72.33 84.58
45 Samoa 71.39 61.82 56.12 64.91 85.00 89.12
46 Sierra Leone 71.03 73.71 50.38 78.40 77.50 75.14
47 Belize 70.67 70.00 52.04 63.60 82.00 85.71
48 Croatia 70.42 68.26 50.46 79.19 76.09 78.08
49 Tonga 69.74 69.70 53.06 66.67 69.50 89.80
50 The Gambia 69.25 71.11 51.36 67.69 81.33 74.74
51 Armenia 68.97 66.26 44.44 77.88 76.33 79.91
52 Suriname 68.95 67.88 55.10 62.28 84.00 75.51
53 Andorra 68.79 68.12 50.41 69.12 68.80 87.48
54 Slovenia 68.54 59.32 47.70 79.11 79.94 76.61
55 OECS 68.49 62.91 48.37 68.25 79.80 83.13
56 Romania 68.46 66.77 46.77 76.46 81.67 70.63
57 North Macedonia 68.44 66.16 43.71 81.29 73.17 77.85
58 Italy 68.16 65.89 47.52 73.93 80.00 73.48
59 Niger 67.80 62.30 46.73 71.75 76.50 81.69
60 Ghana 67.43 66.61 47.22 81.42 79.64 62.25
61 Kosovo 67.00 64.34 45.24 80.85 74.33 70.26
62 Papua New Guinea 66.66 62.42 45.24 66.08 81.33 78.23
63 Montenegro 66.54 62.51 47.67 77.19 71.00 74.33
64 Mauritius 66.07 55.58 47.81 64.16 80.29 82.50
65 Cyprus 65.97 61.21 42.09 74.56 65.75 86.25
66 Poland 65.64 50.95 57.41 68.95 82.53 68.33
67 Bosnia and Herzegovina 65.64 61.56 40.23 79.57 71.86 74.95
68 Ecuador 64.61 60.10 55.44 67.98 69.50 70.03
69 Kenya 64.59 62.42 46.33 72.28 78.00 63.92
70 Haiti 64.55 59.60 50.34 72.22 80.67 59.91
71 Japan 64.37 54.66 53.70 66.23 67.06 80.19
72 Kyrgyzstan 64.25 59.90 48.64 68.86 69.00 74.83
73 Senegal 63.07 59.31 42.13 66.67 72.43 74.84
74 Panama 62.78 54.24 47.45 64.04 74.00 74.15
75 Liberia 62.77 55.50 32.80 74.69 82.57 68.30
76 Nepal 62.67 59.80 40.14 66.08 77.33 69.99
77 Peru 61.75 66.97 41.84 70.61 63.00 66.35
78 Malta 61.55 46.82 41.33 67.98 74.75 76.87
79 Serbia 61.51 47.47 34.92 79.92 74.22 71.03
80 Malawi 61.40 55.76 38.44 78.07 67.67 67.08
81 Northern Cyprus 61.08 56.48 38.78 69.82 60.20 80.14
82 Chile 60.61 65.03 42.86 67.63 72.40 55.15
83 Comoros 60.16 56.36 50.26 59.98 75.63 58.56
84 Guinea 59.82 59.26 47.05 71.15 70.67 50.96
85 Hungary 59.80 47.07 32.31 67.25 67.33 85.03
86 Israel 59.62 65.15 55.10 53.51 77.75 46.61
87 Maldives 59.55 62.27 38.27 67.11 55.00 75.12
88 Lesotho 59.39 57.37 40.14 57.31 74.00 68.11
89 Georgia 59.30 52.42 46.43 80.79 75.50 41.34
90 Mongolia 59.17 55.48 36.18 60.37 69.55 74.27
91 Bulgaria 59.12 54.95 30.10 68.71 66.83 75.02
92 Guinea-Bissau 58.79 51.15 50.82 68.42 62.40 61.18
93 Republic of Congo 58.64 58.06 48.57 64.21 62.60 59.76
94 Tunisia 58.49 61.82 41.84 67.19 70.20 51.42
95 Botswana 58.49 56.97 37.24 56.36 69.75 72.11
96 Paraguay 58.36 54.24 31.12 75.44 65.00 65.99
97 Mauritania 58.10 55.15 35.13 64.29 64.29 71.67
98 Madagascar 58.02 52.58 35.08 64.47 64.50 73.47
99 Angola 57.17 52.83 35.03 61.11 73.00 63.87
100 Togo 57.17 57.52 41.73 61.93 69.50 55.15
101 Central African Republic 56.96 51.21 41.07 62.06 68.25 62.19
102 Fiji 56.91 44.85 39.80 58.33 64.00 77.55
103 Albania 56.41 50.55 29.39 68.77 66.60 66.75
104 Chad 56.18 55.88 43.27 60.35 63.20 58.21
105 Gabon 56.00 48.38 39.46 56.14 65.50 70.52
106 Ukraine 55.76 61.21 42.86 79.45 76.43 18.84
107 Burundi 55.74 50.03 44.67 59.55 52.78 71.66
108 Greece 55.52 60.50 38.13 69.54 65.36 44.10
109 Zambia 55.40 52.35 37.76 58.33 64.00 64.55
110 Brazil 55.36 51.62 37.59 69.74 70.00 47.86
111 Mali 54.48 35.15 42.60 74.34 78.50 41.81
112 El Salvador 54.09 42.94 39.07 63.22 62.86 62.37
113 Malaysia 51.55 46.52 42.60 40.13 56.00 72.48
114 Ethiopia 50.53 50.65 45.77 63.66 57.29 35.29
115 Thailand 50.15 58.99 45.24 47.37 53.67 45.50
116 Mozambique 49.89 46.06 40.31 61.62 47.25 54.21
117 Indonesia 49.27 45.91 41.33 55.70 66.00 37.42
118 Cameroon 49.10 48.05 35.71 56.89 67.57 37.25
119 Qatar 49.03 59.70 46.94 43.86 42.50 52.17
120 Jordan 48.66 40.00 32.65 41.23 66.00 63.40
121 Benin 48.39 47.73 28.19 57.46 55.50 53.10
122 Kazakhstan 48.28 43.52 29.80 51.93 52.30 63.85
123 Tanzania 48.28 43.88 32.65 45.09 59.20 60.56
124 Guatemala 47.94 46.06 33.67 68.86 59.00 32.12
125 Democratic Republic of the Congo 47.66 51.33 41.43 60.88 60.30 24.34
126 Bolivia 47.58 44.55 33.67 58.77 45.00 55.89
127 Mexico 47.57 58.18 43.37 65.79 59.50 11.02
128 South Sudan 47.06 40.48 36.73 52.11 50.60 55.37
129 Nigeria 46.79 45.15 36.39 53.80 69.83 28.75
130 Lebanon 46.58 50.91 38.27 50.22 60.50 33.02
131 Swaziland 46.42 41.31 35.03 43.86 50.50 61.40
132 Uganda 46.35 44.70 36.99 60.96 56.00 33.09
133 Uzbekistan 45.74 44.75 35.71 50.88 53.33 44.03
134 Algeria 45.53 41.21 32.40 54.17 55.88 44.02
135 Western Sahara 45.42 51.67 28.83 55.81 56.00 34.82
135 Morocco 45.42 51.67 28.83 55.81 56.00 34.82
136 Rwanda 45.18 42.12 31.89 57.89 55.25 38.76
137 Zimbabwe 44.94 40.30 32.40 54.17 54.50 43.34
138 United Arab Emirates 44.46 45.45 36.73 32.02 50.50 57.59
139 Singapore 44.23 39.09 29.21 34.21 49.25 69.39
140 Somalia 44.01 51.03 41.22 47.72 61.80 18.27
141 Equatorial Guinea 43.96 42.73 24.49 44.30 44.25 64.04
142 Cambodia 43.48 42.42 27.96 49.65 62.40 34.96
143 Libya 43.16 54.42 34.90 44.91 45.00 36.58
144 Brunei Darussalam 42.53 40.61 30.61 28.51 34.00 78.91
145 Colombia 42.43 44.70 32.27 60.42 50.38 24.40
146 Sri Lanka 42.13 40.91 27.04 53.07 48.25 41.37
147 Philippines 41.84 44.44 23.13 54.97 61.83 24.83
148 Hong Kong 41.64 40.50 35.90 42.58 57.45 31.78
149 Turkey 41.25 38.38 27.55 52.92 55.00 32.37
150 India 41.00 40.76 30.36 57.02 56.25 20.61
151 Sudan 40.96 47.05 29.97 41.45 51.00 35.35
152 Tajikistan 40.26 33.79 29.85 48.68 46.00 42.96
153 Belarus 39.62 32.93 48.75 37.23 60.33 18.85
154 Azerbaijan 39.40 37.66 23.76 48.25 58.86 28.48
155 Russia 38.82 36.36 34.84 44.61 51.29 27.00
156 Afghanistan 38.27 44.65 43.88 42.54 43.33 16.96
157 Pakistan 37.99 39.57 31.92 53.26 47.43 17.75
158 Kuwait 37.87 32.73 19.39 36.84 27.00 73.41
159 Venezuela 37.78 33.70 31.73 44.74 47.50 31.22
160 Nicaragua 37.09 37.45 38.78 31.75 49.80 27.68
161 Lao PDR 36.64 36.06 20.92 31.58 44.00 50.64
162 Bangladesh 36.63 42.12 32.48 44.15 48.50 15.88
163 Oman 35.99 32.73 23.98 18.42 45.00 59.82
164 Djibouti 35.75 32.73 16.12 37.72 37.60 54.56
165 Honduras 34.61 33.33 31.63 36.84 31.00 40.22
166 Saudi Arabia 33.71 37.27 33.67 22.37 36.50 38.75
167 Bahrain 30.97 35.15 21.43 28.95 39.67 29.65
168 Egypt 30.23 30.91 23.47 34.87 44.25 17.64
169 Yemen 29.14 33.03 27.55 38.60 35.00 11.54
170 Palestine 28.98 35.45 15.82 36.40 36.50 20.74
171 Syria 28.94 33.51 27.62 33.58 36.57 13.39
172 Iraq 28.59 34.14 20.07 29.82 40.67 18.27
173 Cuba 27.32 27.27 39.80 15.79 27.50 26.24
174 Vietnam 26.11 32.32 18.71 27.49 34.67 17.37
175 China 25.17 27.45 26.02 23.25 33.30 15.84
176 Myanmar 25.03 40.40 29.25 20.18 30.67 4.63
177 Turkmenistan 25.01 25.00 11.73 29.61 23.00 35.69
178 Iran 23.22 30.71 21.32 26.71 23.78 13.61
179 Eritrea 19.62 22.22 19.73 25.15 19.67 11.36
180 North Korea 13.92 22.42 0.00 22.81 12.00 12.38

Map Visualization¶

<class 'geopandas.geodataframe.GeoDataFrame'>
Int64Index: 232 entries, 0 to 231
Data columns (total 10 columns):
 #   Column         Non-Null Count  Dtype   
---  ------         --------------  -----   
 0   name_long      232 non-null    object  
 1   geometry       232 non-null    geometry
 2   Pos.           177 non-null    float64 
 3   Country        177 non-null    object  
 4   Global Score   177 non-null    float64 
 5   Political      177 non-null    float64 
 6   Economic       177 non-null    float64 
 7   Legislation    177 non-null    float64 
 8   Sociocultural  177 non-null    float64 
 9   Safety         177 non-null    float64 
dtypes: float64(7), geometry(1), object(2)
memory usage: 19.9+ KB

European Results¶

2022 World Press Freedom Index for Europe
Pos. Country Global Score Political Economic Legislation Sociocultural Safety
1 Norway 92.65 94.89 90.38 92.23 93.71 92.03
2 Denmark 90.27 94.34 83.67 89.18 91.17 92.97
3 Sweden 88.84 91.96 87.66 90.27 90.18 84.14
4 Estonia 88.83 91.11 81.97 87.87 90.00 93.20
5 Finland 88.42 90.40 82.03 86.64 90.77 92.26
6 Ireland 88.30 89.24 79.08 85.09 92.50 95.58
7 Portugal 87.07 91.86 77.41 84.21 93.14 88.73
8 Lithuania 84.14 87.01 72.16 84.46 89.71 87.37
9 Liechtenstein 84.03 80.36 68.78 84.74 89.80 96.46
10 Switzerland 82.72 90.00 68.37 80.99 88.33 85.92
11 Iceland 82.69 86.21 65.56 82.68 87.50 91.50
12 Germany 82.04 87.03 80.07 87.08 89.47 66.58
13 Czech Republic 80.54 79.66 61.56 84.21 88.44 88.81
14 Luxembourg 79.81 82.94 66.33 72.93 88.71 88.14
15 Latvia 79.17 78.96 64.58 80.89 87.36 84.06
16 Belgium 78.86 75.03 71.22 79.30 87.40 81.35
17 United Kingdom 78.71 80.57 72.75 76.63 84.29 79.33
18 France 78.53 79.85 67.86 86.51 89.38 69.05
19 Slovakia 78.37 71.44 67.98 82.02 86.38 84.01
20 Netherlands 77.93 86.30 82.86 87.28 86.10 47.09
21 Austria 76.74 77.82 61.43 78.95 81.20 84.29
22 Spain 76.71 72.73 63.38 82.16 81.89 83.40
23 Moldova 73.47 70.15 47.83 83.00 85.88 80.48
24 Croatia 70.42 68.26 50.46 79.19 76.09 78.08
25 Andorra 68.79 68.12 50.41 69.12 68.80 87.48
26 Slovenia 68.54 59.32 47.70 79.11 79.94 76.61
27 Romania 68.46 66.77 46.77 76.46 81.67 70.63
28 North Macedonia 68.44 66.16 43.71 81.29 73.17 77.85
29 Italy 68.16 65.89 47.52 73.93 80.00 73.48
30 Montenegro 66.54 62.51 47.67 77.19 71.00 74.33
31 Poland 65.64 50.95 57.41 68.95 82.53 68.33
32 Bosnia and Herzegovina 65.64 61.56 40.23 79.57 71.86 74.95
33 Malta 61.55 46.82 41.33 67.98 74.75 76.87
34 Serbia 61.51 47.47 34.92 79.92 74.22 71.03
35 Hungary 59.80 47.07 32.31 67.25 67.33 85.03
36 Bulgaria 59.12 54.95 30.10 68.71 66.83 75.02
37 Albania 56.41 50.55 29.39 68.77 66.60 66.75
38 Ukraine 55.76 61.21 42.86 79.45 76.43 18.84
39 Greece 55.52 60.50 38.13 69.54 65.36 44.10
40 Belarus 39.62 32.93 48.75 37.23 60.33 18.85
41 Russia 38.82 36.36 34.84 44.61 51.29 27.00

Map Visualization¶

Notes and Conclusions¶

According to the 2022 edition of the World Press Freedom Index, the five top countries are all located in northern Europe. If we look at the world map we notice that Asian countries are in the worst position except for South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Georgia. African countries are mostly ranked higher than Asian countries, particularly in southern Africa, except for Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia.

In Europe αs I mentioned at the beginning, after the drop of 38 places compared to 2021, Greece is only third to last, worse than all the Balkan countries with Russia and Belarus having the worst score by far. Even in the 2021 ranking, it was only in 30th place out of 41 countries, worse than most countries in the European Union.

According to RSF's report, press freedom in Greece suffered serious setbacks in 2021 and 2022, with journalists regularly prevented from covering issues from migration to Covid-19. Furthermore is noted the assassination of veteran crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz in April 2021 remains unsolved.

The report notes that Greeks' trust in the media has been consistently one of the lowest in Europe. It highlights a lack of transparency in public funding for media outlets, with a few large private groups like Skai coexisting alongside hundreds of online media outlets, which contributes to the high fragmentation of the media landscape. The overwhelming majority of media is owned by a few individuals who are active also in other, highly-regulated business sectors, with some of them having close ties to the political elite.

Freedom in the World Report by Freedom House¶

Who published it?¶

The Freedom in the World report has been published since 1973 by the Freedom House, assessing the condition of political rights and civil liberties around the world. It is widely reported in the media and used as a source of research to measure democracy by policymakers, journalists, academics, and activists. The Freedom House is a non-profit organization founded in Washington, D.C. in October 1941 by the U.S. government, contacting research and advocating for democracy, political freedom, and human rights. You can find more information about the Freedom House and its action on its website: https://freedomhouse.org/about-us

Score Methodology¶

Freedom in the World report produces annual scores representing the levels of political rights and civil liberties for 195 countries and 15 territories. External analysts access each country using a combination of on-the-ground research, consultations with local contracts, and information from news articles, non-governmental organizations, governments, and other sources. Expert advisers, regional specialists, and Freedom House staff presents the results based on the analysts' conclusions.

A country or territory is awarded from 0 to 4 points for each of 10 political rights indicators and 15 civil liberties indicators, which take the form of questions. A score of 0 represents the smallest degree of freedom and 4 the greatest degree of freedom. Political rights questions are grouped into four subcategories:

  • Electoral Process (3 questions)
  • Political Pluralism and Participation (4 questions)
  • Functioning of Government (3 questions)

Civil liberties questions are grouped into four subcategories:

  • Freedom of Expression and Belief (4 questions)
  • Associational and Organizational Rights (3 questions)
  • Rule of Law (4 questions)
  • Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights (4 questions).

The political rights section also contains an additional discretionary question addressing forced demographic change. For the discretionary question, a score of 1 to 4 may be subtracted, as applicable (the worse the situation, the more points may be subtracted). The highest overall score that can be awarded is 100, consisting of 40 points for political rights and 60 points for civil liberties.

For more details about Freedom in the World Research methodology, you can read their report here. Also, here you can download the dataset I will use below.

Data Preparation¶

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 3549 entries, 0 to 3548
Data columns (total 13 columns):
 #   Column             Non-Null Count  Dtype 
---  ------             --------------  ----- 
 0   Country/Territory  3549 non-null   object
 1   Edition            3549 non-null   int64 
 2   A                  3549 non-null   int64 
 3   B                  3549 non-null   int64 
 4   C                  3549 non-null   int64 
 5   Add Q              3549 non-null   int64 
 6   PR                 3549 non-null   int64 
 7   D                  3549 non-null   int64 
 8   E                  3549 non-null   int64 
 9   F                  3549 non-null   int64 
 10  G                  3549 non-null   int64 
 11  CL                 3549 non-null   int64 
 12  Total              3549 non-null   int64 
dtypes: int64(12), object(1)
memory usage: 360.6+ KB
Country/Territory Edition A B C Add Q PR D E F G CL Total
0 Abkhazia 2022 5 8 4 0 17 8 6 4 5 23 40
1 Afghanistan 2022 0 0 1 0 1 4 3 0 2 9 10
2 Albania 2022 9 12 7 0 28 13 8 9 9 39 67
3 Algeria 2022 3 4 3 0 10 6 3 6 7 22 32
4 Andorra 2022 12 15 11 0 38 14 11 15 15 55 93
(210, 12)
27
{'Abkhazia': ['Aruba'],
 'Brunei': ['Brunei Darussalam', 'Federated States of Micronesia'],
 'Cabo Verde': ['Cape Verde', 'Macao'],
 'Congo (Brazzaville)': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 'Congo (Kinshasa)': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo', 'Cook Islands'],
 "Cote d'Ivoire": ["Côte d'Ivoire", 'Cape Verde'],
 'Crimea': ['Ashmore and Cartier Islands'],
 'Eastern Donbas': ['New Caledonia'],
 'Eswatini': ['Swaziland', 'Palestine'],
 'Gaza Strip': [],
 'Indian Kashmir': ['Indian Ocean Territories'],
 'Laos': ['Lao PDR'],
 'Maldives': ['Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'Mauritius': ['Saint-Martin'],
 'Micronesia': ['Federated States of Micronesia', 'Macao'],
 'Nagorno-Karabakh': ['Aruba'],
 'Pakistani Kashmir': [],
 'Sao Tome and Principe': ['São Tomé and Principe',
                           'Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'Seychelles': [],
 'South Ossetia': [],
 'St. Kitts and Nevis': ['Saint Kitts and Nevis',
                         'Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'St. Lucia': ['Saint Lucia', 'United States Virgin Islands'],
 'St. Vincent and the Grenadines': ['Saint Vincent and the Grenadines',
                                    'São Tomé and Principe'],
 'Tibet': ['Palestine', 'Ashmore and Cartier Islands'],
 'Transnistria': [],
 'Tuvalu': [],
 'West Bank': []}
(210, 13)

Worldwide Results¶

2022 Freedom in the World Index
Pos. Country Total Score Electoral Process Political Pluralism Functioning of Goverment Discretionary Question Political Rights Subtotal Freedom of Expression and Belief Associational and Organizational Rights Rule of Law Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights Civil Liberties Subtotal
1 Finland 100 12 16 12 0 40 16 12 16 16 60
2 Norway 100 12 16 12 0 40 16 12 16 16 60
3 Sweden 100 12 16 12 0 40 16 12 16 16 60
4 New Zealand 99 12 16 12 0 40 16 12 15 16 59
5 Canada 98 12 16 12 0 40 15 12 15 16 58
6 Denmark 97 12 16 12 0 40 16 12 14 15 57
7 Ireland 97 12 16 11 0 39 16 12 14 16 58
8 Luxembourg 97 12 16 10 0 38 16 12 15 16 59
9 Netherlands 97 12 16 11 0 39 16 12 15 15 58
10 Uruguay 97 12 16 12 0 40 16 12 14 15 57
11 Belgium 96 12 16 11 0 39 15 12 15 15 57
12 Japan 96 12 16 12 0 40 15 12 15 14 56
13 Switzerland 96 12 15 12 0 39 15 12 15 15 57
14 Australia 95 12 15 12 0 39 15 12 15 14 56
15 Barbados 95 12 16 10 0 38 16 12 14 15 57
16 Portugal 95 12 16 11 0 39 16 11 14 15 56
17 Chile 94 12 15 11 0 38 16 12 13 15 56
18 Estonia 94 12 15 11 0 38 16 12 14 14 56
19 Germany 94 12 15 12 0 39 14 12 14 15 55
20 Iceland 94 12 15 10 0 37 15 12 15 15 57
21 Taiwan 94 12 15 11 0 38 16 11 15 14 56
22 Andorra 93 12 15 11 0 38 14 11 15 15 55
23 Austria 93 12 15 10 0 37 14 12 15 15 56
24 Cyprus 93 12 15 11 0 38 15 11 15 14 55
25 Dominica 93 11 16 10 0 37 15 11 15 15 56
26 Kiribati 93 12 15 10 0 37 16 12 15 13 56
27 Marshall Islands 93 12 16 10 0 38 16 11 15 13 55
28 San Marino 93 12 15 11 0 38 15 12 13 15 55
29 Tuvalu 93 12 15 10 0 37 16 12 15 13 56
30 United Kingdom 93 12 16 11 0 39 14 12 13 15 54
31 Cape Verde 92 12 16 10 0 38 16 11 14 13 54
32 Federated States of Micronesia 92 12 15 10 0 37 16 11 15 13 55
33 Palau 92 12 15 10 0 37 16 11 15 13 55
34 Saint Lucia 92 11 16 11 0 38 15 12 13 14 54
35 Bahamas 91 12 16 10 0 38 15 12 13 13 53
36 Costa Rica 91 12 15 11 0 38 16 11 13 13 53
37 Czech Republic 91 12 15 9 0 36 14 12 14 15 55
38 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 91 11 15 10 0 36 15 12 14 14 55
39 Italy 90 12 14 10 0 36 15 12 13 14 54
40 Liechtenstein 90 10 13 10 0 33 16 12 14 15 57
41 Slovakia 90 12 15 10 0 37 15 12 12 14 53
42 Slovenia 90 12 16 10 0 38 14 10 14 14 52
43 Spain 90 12 16 9 0 37 14 11 13 15 53
44 France 89 12 15 11 0 38 14 10 13 14 51
45 Grenada 89 11 16 10 0 37 15 11 13 13 52
46 Lithuania 89 12 16 10 0 38 15 11 11 14 51
47 Malta 89 12 14 9 0 35 14 12 14 14 54
48 Saint Kitts and Nevis 89 10 15 10 0 35 16 12 13 13 54
49 Latvia 88 12 15 10 0 37 14 12 11 14 51
50 Belize 87 12 14 8 0 34 16 11 13 13 53
51 Greece 87 12 15 10 0 37 14 11 11 14 50
52 Mauritius 86 11 15 10 0 36 14 11 13 12 50
53 Antigua and Barbuda 85 12 13 8 0 33 15 10 14 13 52
54 Croatia 85 12 14 10 0 36 13 12 11 13 49
55 Argentina 84 11 16 8 0 35 15 11 10 13 49
56 Monaco 84 8 10 9 0 27 16 12 14 15 57
57 Mongolia 84 11 16 9 0 36 14 11 11 12 48
58 São Tomé and Principe 84 11 15 9 0 35 15 11 12 11 49
59 Panama 83 12 15 8 0 35 15 11 10 12 48
60 Romania 83 12 14 9 0 35 13 11 12 12 48
61 Samoa 83 9 14 9 0 32 14 11 14 12 51
62 South Korea 83 11 13 9 0 33 14 11 12 13 50
63 United States 83 10 13 9 0 32 14 11 11 15 51
64 Trinidad and Tobago 82 11 13 9 0 33 16 11 9 13 49
65 Vanuatu 82 10 15 8 0 33 14 11 13 11 49
66 Poland 81 10 16 8 0 34 13 10 10 14 47
67 Ghana 80 12 13 10 0 35 14 10 10 11 45
68 Jamaica 80 12 13 9 0 34 15 11 9 11 46
69 Bulgaria 79 11 14 8 0 33 13 11 10 12 46
70 Seychelles 79 12 13 9 0 34 14 9 11 11 45
71 Solomon Islands 79 9 14 7 0 30 16 10 11 12 49
72 South Africa 79 12 13 8 0 33 15 12 9 10 46
73 Suriname 79 11 14 9 0 34 15 11 9 10 45
74 Tonga 79 9 14 7 0 30 14 10 12 13 49
75 Namibia 77 11 12 8 0 31 14 11 11 10 46
76 Nauru 77 12 14 8 0 34 13 9 9 12 43
77 Northern Cyprus 77 9 12 6 0 27 15 11 13 11 50
78 Israel 76 12 13 9 0 34 12 8 11 11 42
79 Brazil 73 10 14 7 0 31 13 9 8 12 42
80 Guyana 73 9 13 8 0 30 15 11 8 9 43
81 Botswana 72 10 10 8 0 28 12 10 11 11 44
82 Peru 72 10 13 7 0 30 15 8 8 11 42
83 Timor-Leste 72 11 14 8 0 33 14 8 8 9 39
84 Ecuador 71 11 13 7 0 31 13 9 8 10 40
85 Hungary 69 9 11 6 0 26 10 10 10 13 43
86 Dominican Republic 68 9 11 7 0 27 14 10 8 9 41
87 Senegal 68 9 12 8 0 29 13 7 8 11 39
88 Albania 67 9 12 7 0 28 13 8 9 9 39
89 Montenegro 67 9 11 6 0 26 12 9 9 11 41
90 North Macedonia 67 9 12 7 0 28 12 8 9 10 39
91 Bolivia 66 10 10 7 0 27 14 9 6 10 39
92 India 66 12 12 9 0 33 9 7 8 9 33
93 Malawi 66 9 12 8 0 29 13 8 9 7 37
94 Paraguay 65 10 12 6 0 28 12 8 7 10 37
95 Sierra Leone 65 10 11 7 0 28 12 6 9 10 37
96 Colombia 64 10 11 8 0 29 12 5 9 9 35
97 Tunisia 64 9 13 4 0 26 12 7 9 10 38
98 Lesotho 63 10 11 6 0 27 12 7 8 9 36
99 Moldova 62 10 12 5 0 27 12 8 6 9 35
100 Papua New Guinea 62 7 13 3 0 23 14 10 7 8 39
101 Serbia 62 7 9 5 0 21 12 8 9 12 41
102 Bhutan 61 10 12 8 1 29 9 5 9 9 32
103 Madagascar 61 9 11 7 0 27 11 8 7 8 34
104 Ukraine 61 9 12 5 0 26 11 8 6 10 35
105 Liberia 60 8 12 7 0 27 11 7 6 9 33
106 Mexico 60 9 13 5 0 27 12 7 5 9 33
107 Benin 59 3 9 5 0 17 14 8 10 10 42
108 El Salvador 59 10 12 4 0 26 11 8 6 8 33
109 Indonesia 59 11 13 6 0 30 9 6 5 9 29
110 Fiji 58 7 9 7 0 23 11 7 7 10 35
111 Georgia 58 7 8 7 0 22 9 7 8 12 36
112 Nepal 57 10 10 5 0 25 10 7 7 8 32
113 Kosovo 56 9 11 5 0 25 9 8 6 8 31
114 Armenia 55 7 10 6 0 23 9 8 6 9 32
115 Philippines 55 9 10 6 0 25 11 6 3 10 30
116 Sri Lanka 55 9 10 5 1 23 8 9 7 8 32
117 Bosnia and Herzegovina 53 6 9 4 0 19 10 7 7 10 34
118 Burkina Faso 53 7 10 6 0 23 11 7 5 7 30
119 Guatemala 51 7 10 4 0 21 11 6 5 8 30
120 Niger 51 8 9 6 0 23 10 6 6 6 28
121 Zambia 51 6 11 4 0 21 8 6 8 8 30
122 Malaysia 50 6 9 5 0 20 8 6 7 9 30
123 Côte d'Ivoire 49 6 9 4 0 19 10 7 6 7 30
124 Somaliland 49 7 10 5 0 22 8 6 7 6 27
125 Kenya 48 6 8 5 0 19 10 7 5 7 29
126 Honduras 47 8 9 4 0 21 9 5 4 8 26
127 Singapore 47 4 8 7 0 19 7 3 7 11 28
128 The Gambia 47 8 9 4 0 21 8 6 6 6 26
129 Guinea-Bissau 43 7 8 2 0 17 10 6 5 5 26
130 Hong Kong 43 0 5 5 0 10 8 3 9 13 33
131 Mozambique 43 3 7 4 0 14 9 6 6 8 29
132 Nigeria 43 6 9 5 0 20 9 6 4 4 23
133 Comoros 42 5 7 4 0 16 8 6 6 6 26
134 Lebanon 42 5 7 1 0 13 10 8 5 6 29
135 Togo 42 4 6 5 0 15 9 5 6 7 27
136 Abkhazia 40 5 8 4 0 17 8 6 4 5 23
137 Maldives 40 7 8 4 0 19 3 5 6 7 21
138 Bangladesh 39 4 7 4 0 15 6 5 4 9 24
139 Kuwait 37 3 7 4 0 14 6 4 7 6 23
140 Morocco 37 5 5 3 0 13 7 5 5 7 24
141 Pakistan 37 5 6 4 0 15 6 6 4 6 22
142 Nagorno-Karabakh 36 7 7 3 1 16 7 6 3 4 20
143 Mauritania 35 6 4 4 0 14 9 4 4 4 21
144 Guinea 34 1 7 2 0 10 10 4 4 6 24
145 Tanzania 34 3 5 4 0 12 7 4 4 7 22
146 Uganda 34 3 5 3 0 11 8 4 4 7 23
147 Haiti 33 3 5 3 0 11 9 4 4 5 22
148 Jordan 33 2 6 3 0 11 7 1 7 7 22
149 Algeria 32 3 4 3 0 10 6 3 6 7 22
150 Mali 32 1 5 2 0 8 10 6 4 4 24
151 Turkey 32 5 8 3 0 16 5 3 3 5 16
152 Angola 30 3 5 2 0 10 7 5 5 3 20
153 Iraq 29 8 7 2 1 16 4 4 1 4 13
154 Pakistani Kashmir 29 4 4 3 2 9 6 4 4 6 20
155 Thailand 29 1 2 2 0 5 6 3 5 10 24
156 Brunei Darussalam 28 0 3 4 0 7 6 3 5 7 21
157 Zimbabwe 28 3 5 3 0 11 7 3 2 5 17
158 Indian Kashmir 27 2 3 2 0 7 6 3 4 7 20
159 Kyrgyzstan 27 2 3 0 1 4 10 4 2 7 23
160 Qatar 25 2 2 3 0 7 7 2 5 4 18
161 Cambodia 24 1 2 2 0 5 7 3 3 6 19
162 Djibouti 24 2 3 0 0 5 6 3 4 6 19
163 Oman 24 2 2 2 0 6 5 4 4 5 18
164 Ethiopia 23 4 4 4 0 12 4 3 1 3 11
165 Kazakhstan 23 1 3 1 0 5 4 2 4 8 18
166 Nicaragua 23 0 3 2 0 5 5 2 3 8 18
167 West Bank 23 1 4 2 3 4 6 4 4 5 19
168 Rwanda 22 2 2 4 0 8 3 2 2 7 14
169 Gabon 21 0 2 1 0 3 7 3 3 5 18
170 Democratic Republic of the Congo 19 1 2 1 0 4 7 3 1 4 15
171 Russia 19 0 3 2 0 5 3 2 2 7 14
172 Vietnam 19 0 1 2 0 3 3 1 4 8 16
173 Egypt 18 2 2 2 0 6 3 1 2 6 12
174 Transnistria 18 1 4 1 0 6 4 1 2 5 12
175 Republic of Congo 17 0 2 0 0 2 6 2 1 6 15
176 Swaziland 17 0 1 0 0 1 5 2 4 5 16
177 United Arab Emirates 17 1 2 2 0 5 3 2 3 4 12
178 Cameroon 15 1 3 2 0 6 4 2 0 3 9
179 Chad 15 0 1 0 0 1 6 4 1 3 14
180 Burundi 14 1 3 0 0 4 4 1 1 4 10
181 Iran 14 2 2 0 0 4 2 1 3 4 10
182 Venezuela 14 0 1 0 0 1 6 2 1 4 13
183 Lao PDR 13 0 0 2 0 2 3 0 2 6 11
184 Bahrain 12 2 0 2 2 2 2 1 1 6 10
185 Cuba 12 0 0 1 0 1 4 0 1 6 11
186 Gaza Strip 11 0 2 1 0 3 4 2 0 2 8
187 South Ossetia 11 2 2 0 2 2 3 2 1 3 9
188 Uzbekistan 11 1 0 1 0 2 3 1 1 4 9
189 Afghanistan 10 0 0 1 0 1 4 3 0 2 9
190 Sudan 10 0 2 0 2 0 5 2 0 3 10
191 Azerbaijan 9 0 2 0 0 2 2 1 0 4 7
192 China 9 0 0 1 3 -2 1 2 2 6 11
193 Libya 9 0 1 0 0 1 4 2 0 2 8
194 Myanmar 9 0 3 1 4 0 3 2 0 4 9
195 Yemen 9 0 1 0 0 1 2 3 1 2 8
196 Belarus 8 0 1 1 0 2 1 0 0 5 6
197 Tajikistan 8 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 1 4 8
198 Central African Republic 7 2 2 0 1 3 3 1 0 0 4
199 Crimea 7 0 0 0 2 -2 2 1 0 6 9
200 Saudi Arabia 7 0 0 1 0 1 2 0 2 2 6
201 Somalia 7 0 1 0 0 1 3 3 0 0 6
202 Equatorial Guinea 5 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 3 5
203 Eastern Donbas 4 0 0 0 1 -1 2 0 0 3 5
204 Western Sahara 4 0 0 0 3 -3 3 0 0 4 7
205 Eritrea 3 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 2
206 North Korea 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 3
207 Turkmenistan 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2
208 South Sudan 1 0 1 0 4 -3 2 2 0 0 4
209 Syria 1 0 0 0 3 -3 3 0 0 1 4
210 Tibet 1 0 0 1 3 -2 0 0 0 3 3

Map Visualization¶

European Results¶

Freedom in the World Index for Europe
Pos. Country Total Score Electoral Process Political Pluralism Functioning of Goverment Discretionary Question Political Rights Subtotal Freedom of Expression and Belief Associational and Organizational Rights Rule of Law Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights Civil Liberties Subtotal
1 Finland 100 12 16 12 0 40 16 12 16 16 60
2 Norway 100 12 16 12 0 40 16 12 16 16 60
3 Sweden 100 12 16 12 0 40 16 12 16 16 60
4 Denmark 97 12 16 12 0 40 16 12 14 15 57
5 Ireland 97 12 16 11 0 39 16 12 14 16 58
6 Luxembourg 97 12 16 10 0 38 16 12 15 16 59
7 Netherlands 97 12 16 11 0 39 16 12 15 15 58
8 Belgium 96 12 16 11 0 39 15 12 15 15 57
9 Switzerland 96 12 15 12 0 39 15 12 15 15 57
10 Portugal 95 12 16 11 0 39 16 11 14 15 56
11 Estonia 94 12 15 11 0 38 16 12 14 14 56
12 Germany 94 12 15 12 0 39 14 12 14 15 55
13 Iceland 94 12 15 10 0 37 15 12 15 15 57
14 Andorra 93 12 15 11 0 38 14 11 15 15 55
15 Austria 93 12 15 10 0 37 14 12 15 15 56
16 United Kingdom 93 12 16 11 0 39 14 12 13 15 54
17 Czech Republic 91 12 15 9 0 36 14 12 14 15 55
18 Italy 90 12 14 10 0 36 15 12 13 14 54
19 Liechtenstein 90 10 13 10 0 33 16 12 14 15 57
20 Slovakia 90 12 15 10 0 37 15 12 12 14 53
21 Slovenia 90 12 16 10 0 38 14 10 14 14 52
22 Spain 90 12 16 9 0 37 14 11 13 15 53
23 France 89 12 15 11 0 38 14 10 13 14 51
24 Lithuania 89 12 16 10 0 38 15 11 11 14 51
25 Malta 89 12 14 9 0 35 14 12 14 14 54
26 Latvia 88 12 15 10 0 37 14 12 11 14 51
27 Greece 87 12 15 10 0 37 14 11 11 14 50
28 Croatia 85 12 14 10 0 36 13 12 11 13 49
29 Romania 83 12 14 9 0 35 13 11 12 12 48
30 Poland 81 10 16 8 0 34 13 10 10 14 47
31 Bulgaria 79 11 14 8 0 33 13 11 10 12 46
32 Hungary 69 9 11 6 0 26 10 10 10 13 43
33 Albania 67 9 12 7 0 28 13 8 9 9 39
34 Montenegro 67 9 11 6 0 26 12 9 9 11 41
35 North Macedonia 67 9 12 7 0 28 12 8 9 10 39
36 Moldova 62 10 12 5 0 27 12 8 6 9 35
37 Serbia 62 7 9 5 0 21 12 8 9 12 41
38 Ukraine 61 9 12 5 0 26 11 8 6 10 35
39 Bosnia and Herzegovina 53 6 9 4 0 19 10 7 7 10 34
40 Russia 19 0 3 2 0 5 3 2 2 7 14
41 Belarus 8 0 1 1 0 2 1 0 0 5 6

Map Visualization¶

Note and Conclusions¶

As far as civil liberties and political rights are concerned, along with New Zealand and Canada the 4 Nordic countries, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are yet again in the top 6 positions on the Freedom in the World index.

Asia: Similar to the World Press Freedom index countries such as Mongolia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Nepal, Bhutan, Georgia, and Armenia are the bright exception compared to the rest of the Asian countries. A notable difference is India and Israel which received a positive score. Sri Lanka is also ranked well but it will be interesting to see next year's ranking after the recent events in the country. Kyrgyzstan, on the other hand, ranks low on the World Press Freedom Index.

Africa: Most African countries fare much worse than their respective rankings in the World Press Freedom Index. Notable exceptions are southern countries such as Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Malawi, and Madagascar. As well as countries in sub-Saharan Africa such as Ghana, Benin, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

America: Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba are in a significantly worse position than the rest of North and South America. The same countries also scored low in the World Press Freedom index.

WJP Rule of Law Index¶

The Rule of Law Index relies on national surveys of more than 138.000 households and 4.200 legal practitioners and experts' surveys to measure how the rule of law is experienced and perceived worldwide, covering 139 countries and jurisdictions.

It is published annually by the World Justice Project (WJP), an international civil society organization with the stated mission of "working to create knowledge, build awareness, and stimulate action to advance the rule of law worldwide". WJP was founded by William H. Neukom and William C. Hubbard in 2006 as a presidential initiative of the American Bar Association and with the support of 21 partners. It became independent in 2009 and its offices are located in Washington, D.C., Mexico City, and Seattle, Washington.

The score is assessed through 44 indicators organized around 9 factors:

  • Constraints on Government Powers
  • Absence of Corruption
  • Open Government
  • Fundamental Rights
  • Order and Security
  • Regulatory Enforcement
  • Civil Justice
  • Criminal Justice
  • Informal Justice

The results are collected through a set of five questionnaires administered to experts and the general public. More than 300 local experts identified per country by the WJP and local polling companies implement the household surveys.

Those questionnaires are codified as numeric values, aggregated by country, and normalized. Then the normalized scores are aggregated into sub-factors and factors using simple averages that produce the final ranking. The score ranges from 0 to 1. Again note that the latest data is for 2021.

You can learn more about the World of Justice Project on their site https://worldjusticeproject.org/about-us.

Their methodology is analyzed here and you can download the dataset from here.

Data Preparation¶

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 51 entries, 0 to 50
Columns: 140 entries, 0 to 139
dtypes: object(140)
memory usage: 55.9+ KB
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139
0 Country Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Australia Austria The Bahamas ... Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Venezuela, RB Vietnam Zambia Zimbabwe
1 Country Code AFG ALB DZA AGO ATG ARG AUS AUT BHS ... UKR ARE GBR USA URY UZB VEN VNM ZMB ZWE
2 Region South Asia Eastern Europe & Central Asia Middle East & North Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Latin America & Caribbean Latin America & Caribbean East Asia & Pacific EU + EFTA + North America Latin America & Caribbean ... Eastern Europe & Central Asia Middle East & North Africa EU + EFTA + North America EU + EFTA + North America Latin America & Caribbean Eastern Europe & Central Asia Latin America & Caribbean East Asia & Pacific Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa
3 Income Group* Low Upper middle Lower middle Lower middle High Upper middle High High High ... Lower middle High High High High Lower middle Upper middle Lower middle Lower middle Lower middle
4 WJP Rule of Law Index: Overall Score 0.352819 0.491574 0.491954 0.427656 0.63371 0.558388 0.793455 0.812422 0.607958 ... 0.509684 0.639549 0.7854 0.694982 0.713862 0.490919 0.265062 0.488843 0.443416 0.393135

5 rows × 140 columns

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
Int64Index: 139 entries, 1 to 139
Data columns (total 10 columns):
 #   Column                           Non-Null Count  Dtype 
---  ------                           --------------  ----- 
 0   Country                          139 non-null    object
 1   Overall Score                    139 non-null    object
 2   Constraints on Goverment Powers  139 non-null    object
 3   Absense of Corruption            139 non-null    object
 4   Open Government                  139 non-null    object
 5   Fundamental Rights               139 non-null    object
 6   Order and Security               139 non-null    object
 7   Regulatory Enforcement           139 non-null    object
 8   Civil Justice                    139 non-null    object
 9   Criminal Justice                 139 non-null    object
dtypes: object(10)
memory usage: 11.9+ KB
Country Overall Score Constraints on Goverment Powers Absense of Corruption Open Government Fundamental Rights Order and Security Regulatory Enforcement Civil Justice Criminal Justice
1 Afghanistan 0.352819 0.422913 0.296204 0.392979 0.401684 0.29605 0.360464 0.345449 0.30681
2 Albania 0.491574 0.427895 0.368125 0.468726 0.577107 0.77915 0.434221 0.472583 0.404783
3 Algeria 0.491954 0.475444 0.446689 0.353974 0.447246 0.754499 0.481974 0.550387 0.425419
4 Angola 0.427656 0.428918 0.435283 0.388427 0.387073 0.573123 0.425326 0.435201 0.347895
5 Antigua and Barbuda 0.63371 0.608021 0.594526 0.539114 0.702043 0.782952 0.632715 0.679421 0.530887
16
{'Congo, Dem. Rep.': ['Democratic Republic of the Congo', 'Republic of Congo'],
 'Congo, Rep.': ['Republic of Congo', 'Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 "Cote d'Ivoire": ["Côte d'Ivoire", 'Cape Verde'],
 'Egypt, Arab Rep.': ['Egypt', 'Aruba'],
 'Hong Kong SAR, China': ['Hong Kong', 'Tonga'],
 'Iran, Islamic Rep.': ['Iran', 'Iraq'],
 'Korea, Rep.': ['South Korea', 'North Korea'],
 'Kyrgyz Republic': ['Central African Republic',
                     'Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 'Mauritius': ['Nauru', 'Saint-Martin'],
 'Russian Federation': ['Russia', 'Iran'],
 'Slovak Republic': ['Central African Republic',
                     'Democratic Republic of the Congo'],
 'St. Kitts and Nevis': ['Saint Kitts and Nevis',
                         'Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'St. Lucia': ['Saint Lucia', 'Libya'],
 'St. Vincent and the Grenadines': ['Saint Vincent and the Grenadines',
                                    'São Tomé and Principe'],
 'The Bahamas': ['Bahamas', 'Saint Vincent and the Grenadines'],
 'Venezuela, RB': ['Venezuela', 'Lao PDR']}

Worldwide Results¶

Rule of Law Index 2021
Pos. Country Overall Score Constraints on Goverment Powers Absense of Corruption Open Government Fundamental Rights Order and Security Regulatory Enforcement Civil Justice Criminal Justice
1 Denmark 0.90 0.94 0.95 0.87 0.92 0.92 0.89 0.86 0.83
2 Norway 0.90 0.94 0.94 0.89 0.91 0.93 0.88 0.85 0.85
3 Finland 0.88 0.92 0.89 0.87 0.90 0.92 0.87 0.82 0.84
4 Sweden 0.86 0.87 0.90 0.86 0.87 0.92 0.84 0.83 0.80
5 Germany 0.84 0.86 0.83 0.80 0.85 0.89 0.86 0.84 0.79
6 Netherlands 0.83 0.85 0.87 0.82 0.84 0.85 0.85 0.83 0.75
7 New Zealand 0.83 0.86 0.88 0.82 0.82 0.89 0.86 0.78 0.74
8 Luxembourg 0.83 0.82 0.87 0.79 0.85 0.93 0.85 0.79 0.73
9 Austria 0.81 0.85 0.82 0.70 0.85 0.91 0.82 0.75 0.80
10 Ireland 0.81 0.82 0.80 0.80 0.82 0.94 0.81 0.74 0.72
11 Estonia 0.81 0.83 0.80 0.80 0.82 0.89 0.79 0.80 0.72
12 Canada 0.80 0.82 0.82 0.80 0.82 0.90 0.80 0.70 0.73
13 Australia 0.79 0.81 0.81 0.80 0.78 0.87 0.81 0.74 0.72
14 Belgium 0.79 0.83 0.80 0.78 0.84 0.81 0.81 0.76 0.70
15 Japan 0.79 0.72 0.82 0.70 0.78 0.92 0.79 0.77 0.77
16 United Kingdom 0.79 0.81 0.82 0.79 0.80 0.83 0.80 0.71 0.71
17 Singapore 0.78 0.67 0.91 0.63 0.67 0.93 0.86 0.80 0.78
18 Lithuania 0.75 0.75 0.69 0.73 0.75 0.89 0.74 0.78 0.68
19 Hong Kong 0.75 0.61 0.85 0.73 0.61 0.93 0.81 0.75 0.71
20 South Korea 0.74 0.71 0.67 0.71 0.75 0.83 0.74 0.77 0.71
21 Spain 0.73 0.73 0.74 0.70 0.80 0.82 0.71 0.67 0.67
22 Czech Republic 0.73 0.72 0.65 0.68 0.79 0.89 0.71 0.67 0.71
23 France 0.72 0.72 0.74 0.76 0.71 0.76 0.76 0.70 0.61
24 Latvia 0.71 0.70 0.66 0.74 0.75 0.83 0.71 0.66 0.65
25 Uruguay 0.71 0.76 0.73 0.72 0.79 0.70 0.71 0.73 0.56
26 Portugal 0.70 0.78 0.72 0.66 0.77 0.79 0.61 0.68 0.59
27 United States 0.69 0.68 0.72 0.75 0.66 0.81 0.71 0.62 0.60
28 Cyprus 0.68 0.66 0.68 0.61 0.72 0.81 0.65 0.63 0.70
29 Slovenia 0.68 0.65 0.66 0.65 0.76 0.90 0.65 0.65 0.55
30 Malta 0.68 0.65 0.68 0.63 0.73 0.92 0.58 0.61 0.63
31 Costa Rica 0.68 0.76 0.65 0.70 0.78 0.69 0.67 0.60 0.57
32 Chile 0.66 0.72 0.69 0.70 0.72 0.67 0.64 0.63 0.55
33 Slovakia 0.66 0.68 0.51 0.69 0.73 0.90 0.65 0.57 0.57
34 Italy 0.66 0.71 0.64 0.63 0.73 0.75 0.61 0.56 0.64
35 Barbados 0.65 0.64 0.69 0.53 0.73 0.78 0.62 0.64 0.58
36 Poland 0.64 0.54 0.72 0.59 0.61 0.86 0.61 0.61 0.58
37 United Arab Emirates 0.64 0.56 0.80 0.35 0.45 0.91 0.71 0.66 0.67
38 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 0.64 0.60 0.69 0.52 0.71 0.76 0.55 0.63 0.62
39 Antigua and Barbuda 0.63 0.61 0.59 0.54 0.70 0.78 0.63 0.68 0.53
40 Saint Kitts and Nevis 0.63 0.61 0.65 0.45 0.70 0.77 0.61 0.67 0.59
41 Romania 0.63 0.61 0.55 0.62 0.67 0.83 0.58 0.63 0.53
42 Rwanda 0.62 0.62 0.65 0.59 0.50 0.82 0.59 0.66 0.53
43 Saint Lucia 0.62 0.59 0.63 0.48 0.67 0.75 0.59 0.69 0.54
44 Namibia 0.62 0.67 0.52 0.58 0.65 0.75 0.59 0.64 0.55
45 Mauritius 0.61 0.59 0.58 0.52 0.63 0.76 0.62 0.63 0.54
46 Croatia 0.61 0.56 0.56 0.60 0.67 0.85 0.57 0.57 0.49
47 Bahamas 0.61 0.62 0.64 0.52 0.68 0.74 0.50 0.57 0.60
48 Greece 0.61 0.68 0.56 0.61 0.65 0.71 0.57 0.60 0.50
49 Georgia 0.61 0.54 0.68 0.59 0.63 0.79 0.56 0.54 0.53
50 Grenada 0.59 0.57 0.66 0.44 0.63 0.77 0.56 0.61 0.50
51 Botswana 0.59 0.60 0.58 0.48 0.58 0.71 0.60 0.60 0.58
52 South Africa 0.58 0.63 0.48 0.63 0.64 0.61 0.55 0.61 0.52
53 Dominica 0.58 0.53 0.60 0.50 0.62 0.74 0.53 0.56 0.56
54 Malaysia 0.57 0.57 0.58 0.41 0.51 0.78 0.57 0.64 0.55
55 Jamaica 0.57 0.64 0.55 0.56 0.63 0.63 0.55 0.53 0.48
56 Argentina 0.56 0.57 0.48 0.62 0.69 0.62 0.50 0.57 0.42
57 Senegal 0.55 0.57 0.54 0.43 0.60 0.71 0.55 0.56 0.47
58 Ghana 0.55 0.66 0.39 0.49 0.58 0.72 0.54 0.57 0.46
59 Jordan 0.55 0.46 0.59 0.40 0.48 0.76 0.55 0.61 0.56
60 Kosovo 0.55 0.53 0.46 0.55 0.59 0.82 0.47 0.48 0.47
61 Mongolia 0.54 0.54 0.43 0.50 0.58 0.76 0.50 0.55 0.49
62 Bulgaria 0.54 0.46 0.44 0.56 0.60 0.77 0.52 0.54 0.44
63 Trinidad and Tobago 0.53 0.56 0.49 0.56 0.59 0.66 0.51 0.58 0.32
64 North Macedonia 0.53 0.47 0.45 0.50 0.59 0.79 0.47 0.53 0.45
65 Tunisia 0.53 0.60 0.48 0.50 0.55 0.67 0.52 0.50 0.42
66 Kazakhstan 0.52 0.43 0.49 0.46 0.45 0.79 0.52 0.62 0.45
67 Malawi 0.52 0.58 0.43 0.45 0.58 0.69 0.47 0.56 0.44
68 Indonesia 0.52 0.67 0.40 0.54 0.51 0.68 0.55 0.45 0.38
69 Hungary 0.52 0.39 0.49 0.44 0.56 0.90 0.46 0.45 0.46
70 Nepal 0.52 0.59 0.41 0.52 0.51 0.73 0.51 0.46 0.44
71 Panama 0.52 0.53 0.41 0.58 0.63 0.67 0.51 0.47 0.33
72 Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.52 0.45 0.42 0.47 0.59 0.78 0.48 0.47 0.46
73 Moldova 0.51 0.47 0.36 0.57 0.56 0.81 0.45 0.50 0.39
74 Ukraine 0.51 0.47 0.33 0.57 0.61 0.75 0.44 0.54 0.37
75 Burkina Faso 0.50 0.57 0.43 0.48 0.56 0.56 0.49 0.46 0.49
76 Sri Lanka 0.50 0.54 0.49 0.52 0.53 0.56 0.50 0.45 0.43
77 Brazil 0.50 0.51 0.43 0.60 0.48 0.64 0.49 0.52 0.33
78 Guyana 0.50 0.54 0.45 0.44 0.56 0.63 0.45 0.53 0.40
79 India 0.50 0.59 0.40 0.60 0.49 0.60 0.48 0.44 0.39
80 Thailand 0.50 0.46 0.47 0.49 0.47 0.71 0.46 0.48 0.43
81 Serbia 0.49 0.38 0.43 0.46 0.56 0.77 0.47 0.50 0.39
82 Algeria 0.49 0.48 0.45 0.35 0.45 0.75 0.48 0.55 0.43
83 Albania 0.49 0.43 0.37 0.47 0.58 0.78 0.43 0.47 0.40
84 Suriname 0.49 0.48 0.44 0.38 0.53 0.64 0.45 0.48 0.52
85 Uzbekistan 0.49 0.38 0.46 0.37 0.44 0.90 0.44 0.50 0.45
86 Colombia 0.49 0.53 0.39 0.62 0.51 0.56 0.52 0.47 0.32
87 Peru 0.49 0.60 0.32 0.54 0.61 0.61 0.48 0.43 0.32
88 Vietnam 0.49 0.45 0.41 0.46 0.45 0.77 0.44 0.46 0.46
89 The Gambia 0.49 0.59 0.47 0.37 0.52 0.70 0.37 0.50 0.39
90 Morocco 0.49 0.51 0.42 0.43 0.43 0.68 0.53 0.53 0.36
91 Benin 0.49 0.50 0.38 0.39 0.53 0.77 0.48 0.42 0.42
92 Ecuador 0.48 0.50 0.41 0.51 0.52 0.62 0.48 0.49 0.36
93 Belize 0.48 0.44 0.43 0.44 0.51 0.70 0.41 0.52 0.37
94 Dominican Republic 0.48 0.47 0.39 0.53 0.57 0.64 0.41 0.44 0.36
95 El Salvador 0.48 0.47 0.36 0.51 0.50 0.67 0.50 0.50 0.30
96 Paraguay 0.48 0.49 0.30 0.58 0.53 0.71 0.47 0.44 0.28
97 Belarus 0.48 0.27 0.51 0.33 0.41 0.80 0.46 0.57 0.43
98 China 0.47 0.31 0.53 0.38 0.27 0.81 0.49 0.52 0.45
99 Kyrgyzstan 0.47 0.45 0.30 0.52 0.48 0.76 0.43 0.47 0.32
100 Tanzania 0.47 0.51 0.42 0.37 0.43 0.69 0.44 0.48 0.38
101 Russia 0.46 0.35 0.42 0.49 0.42 0.70 0.48 0.53 0.31
102 Philippines 0.46 0.48 0.44 0.50 0.39 0.63 0.48 0.45 0.31
103 Togo 0.45 0.36 0.43 0.30 0.46 0.74 0.49 0.49 0.36
104 Lebanon 0.45 0.49 0.36 0.42 0.47 0.64 0.44 0.42 0.35
105 Côte d'Ivoire 0.45 0.38 0.35 0.37 0.45 0.68 0.50 0.50 0.36
106 Kenya 0.44 0.48 0.27 0.49 0.47 0.55 0.43 0.47 0.39
107 Zambia 0.44 0.43 0.36 0.38 0.41 0.68 0.43 0.46 0.40
108 Sierra Leone 0.44 0.49 0.36 0.38 0.51 0.67 0.36 0.42 0.36
109 Guatemala 0.44 0.52 0.33 0.51 0.53 0.59 0.42 0.36 0.29
110 Liberia 0.44 0.50 0.31 0.44 0.51 0.60 0.42 0.43 0.31
111 Niger 0.44 0.39 0.40 0.36 0.48 0.62 0.47 0.45 0.37
112 Madagascar 0.44 0.44 0.27 0.46 0.46 0.71 0.38 0.45 0.33
113 Mexico 0.43 0.45 0.26 0.60 0.49 0.53 0.44 0.37 0.29
114 Angola 0.43 0.43 0.44 0.39 0.39 0.57 0.43 0.44 0.35
115 Mali 0.43 0.45 0.32 0.45 0.51 0.48 0.48 0.42 0.29
116 Sudan 0.42 0.45 0.40 0.40 0.38 0.64 0.36 0.40 0.37
117 Turkey 0.42 0.28 0.46 0.40 0.31 0.70 0.41 0.43 0.36
118 Republic of Congo 0.42 0.38 0.31 0.36 0.40 0.63 0.48 0.44 0.35
119 Iran 0.42 0.35 0.40 0.28 0.22 0.74 0.45 0.54 0.36
120 Guinea 0.41 0.38 0.27 0.36 0.49 0.72 0.36 0.41 0.31
121 Nigeria 0.41 0.50 0.32 0.42 0.43 0.34 0.43 0.48 0.40
122 Ethiopia 0.41 0.38 0.46 0.33 0.33 0.61 0.38 0.43 0.35
123 Mozambique 0.40 0.42 0.36 0.37 0.41 0.49 0.40 0.44 0.32
124 Bangladesh 0.40 0.37 0.35 0.42 0.31 0.63 0.40 0.38 0.32
125 Uganda 0.39 0.40 0.26 0.38 0.36 0.59 0.42 0.41 0.32
126 Honduras 0.39 0.33 0.31 0.42 0.41 0.65 0.37 0.40 0.25
127 Zimbabwe 0.39 0.33 0.31 0.32 0.34 0.67 0.35 0.46 0.37
128 Myanmar 0.39 0.39 0.44 0.36 0.27 0.64 0.45 0.35 0.26
129 Bolivia 0.39 0.37 0.27 0.43 0.47 0.59 0.41 0.33 0.22
130 Pakistan 0.39 0.47 0.31 0.42 0.38 0.37 0.39 0.40 0.35
131 Nicaragua 0.38 0.25 0.32 0.38 0.34 0.71 0.39 0.36 0.28
132 Haiti 0.38 0.39 0.28 0.38 0.43 0.53 0.31 0.41 0.28
133 Mauritania 0.36 0.34 0.30 0.29 0.40 0.64 0.28 0.39 0.29
134 Afghanistan 0.35 0.42 0.30 0.39 0.40 0.30 0.36 0.35 0.31
135 Cameroon 0.35 0.36 0.25 0.32 0.36 0.48 0.40 0.39 0.25
136 Egypt 0.35 0.24 0.38 0.22 0.24 0.63 0.36 0.37 0.34
137 Democratic Republic of the Congo 0.35 0.40 0.16 0.33 0.41 0.48 0.35 0.36 0.27
138 Cambodia 0.32 0.28 0.23 0.26 0.33 0.67 0.27 0.25 0.25
139 Venezuela 0.27 0.17 0.29 0.28 0.29 0.50 0.19 0.27 0.12

Map Visualization¶

European Results¶

Rule of Law Index 2021 in Europe
Pos. Country Overall Score Constraints on Goverment Powers Absense of Corruption Open Government Fundamental Rights Order and Security Regulatory Enforcement Civil Justice Criminal Justice
1 Denmark 0.90 0.94 0.95 0.87 0.92 0.92 0.89 0.86 0.83
2 Norway 0.90 0.94 0.94 0.89 0.91 0.93 0.88 0.85 0.85
3 Finland 0.88 0.92 0.89 0.87 0.90 0.92 0.87 0.82 0.84
4 Sweden 0.86 0.87 0.90 0.86 0.87 0.92 0.84 0.83 0.80
5 Germany 0.84 0.86 0.83 0.80 0.85 0.89 0.86 0.84 0.79
6 Netherlands 0.83 0.85 0.87 0.82 0.84 0.85 0.85 0.83 0.75
7 Luxembourg 0.83 0.82 0.87 0.79 0.85 0.93 0.85 0.79 0.73
8 Austria 0.81 0.85 0.82 0.70 0.85 0.91 0.82 0.75 0.80
9 Ireland 0.81 0.82 0.80 0.80 0.82 0.94 0.81 0.74 0.72
10 Estonia 0.81 0.83 0.80 0.80 0.82 0.89 0.79 0.80 0.72
11 Belgium 0.79 0.83 0.80 0.78 0.84 0.81 0.81 0.76 0.70
12 United Kingdom 0.79 0.81 0.82 0.79 0.80 0.83 0.80 0.71 0.71
13 Lithuania 0.75 0.75 0.69 0.73 0.75 0.89 0.74 0.78 0.68
14 Spain 0.73 0.73 0.74 0.70 0.80 0.82 0.71 0.67 0.67
15 Czech Republic 0.73 0.72 0.65 0.68 0.79 0.89 0.71 0.67 0.71
16 France 0.72 0.72 0.74 0.76 0.71 0.76 0.76 0.70 0.61
17 Latvia 0.71 0.70 0.66 0.74 0.75 0.83 0.71 0.66 0.65
18 Portugal 0.70 0.78 0.72 0.66 0.77 0.79 0.61 0.68 0.59
19 Slovenia 0.68 0.65 0.66 0.65 0.76 0.90 0.65 0.65 0.55
20 Malta 0.68 0.65 0.68 0.63 0.73 0.92 0.58 0.61 0.63
21 Slovakia 0.66 0.68 0.51 0.69 0.73 0.90 0.65 0.57 0.57
22 Italy 0.66 0.71 0.64 0.63 0.73 0.75 0.61 0.56 0.64
23 Poland 0.64 0.54 0.72 0.59 0.61 0.86 0.61 0.61 0.58
24 Romania 0.63 0.61 0.55 0.62 0.67 0.83 0.58 0.63 0.53
25 Croatia 0.61 0.56 0.56 0.60 0.67 0.85 0.57 0.57 0.49
26 Greece 0.61 0.68 0.56 0.61 0.65 0.71 0.57 0.60 0.50
27 Bulgaria 0.54 0.46 0.44 0.56 0.60 0.77 0.52 0.54 0.44
28 North Macedonia 0.53 0.47 0.45 0.50 0.59 0.79 0.47 0.53 0.45
29 Hungary 0.52 0.39 0.49 0.44 0.56 0.90 0.46 0.45 0.46
30 Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.52 0.45 0.42 0.47 0.59 0.78 0.48 0.47 0.46
31 Moldova 0.51 0.47 0.36 0.57 0.56 0.81 0.45 0.50 0.39
32 Ukraine 0.51 0.47 0.33 0.57 0.61 0.75 0.44 0.54 0.37
33 Serbia 0.49 0.38 0.43 0.46 0.56 0.77 0.47 0.50 0.39
34 Albania 0.49 0.43 0.37 0.47 0.58 0.78 0.43 0.47 0.40
35 Belarus 0.48 0.27 0.51 0.33 0.41 0.80 0.46 0.57 0.43
36 Russia 0.46 0.35 0.42 0.49 0.42 0.70 0.48 0.53 0.31

Map Visualization¶

Corruption Perceptions Index¶

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is published annually since 1995 by Transparency International, a German registered association founded in 1993 by former employees of the World Bank. Based in Berlin, Transparency International is a non-profit, non-governmental organization purposed to combat global corruption and prevent criminal activities arising from it.

CPI ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be, determined by at least 3 data sources drawn from 13 different corruption surveys and assessments. These data sources are collected by a variety of institutions, including the World Bank and the World Economic Forum. CPI has received criticism over the years firstly due to the difficulty in measuring corruption, which, by definition, happens behind the scenes, and secondly, the need to rely on third-party surveys to compile the index.

The index ranks 180 countries and territories around the world and the results are given on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

If you want to learn more about Transparency International you can visit their site https://www.transparency.org. You can read more about the scoring methodology here and here, you can download the data CPI (2021) by Transparency International is licensed under CC-BYND 4.0 Note that the latest data available are from 2021 compared to the other datasets.

Data Preparation¶

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 180 entries, 0 to 179
Data columns (total 22 columns):
 #   Column                                               Non-Null Count  Dtype  
---  ------                                               --------------  -----  
 0   Country / Territory                                  180 non-null    object 
 1   ISO3                                                 180 non-null    object 
 2   Region                                               180 non-null    object 
 3   CPI score 2021                                       180 non-null    int64  
 4   Rank                                                 180 non-null    int64  
 5   Standard error                                       180 non-null    float64
 6   Number of sources                                    180 non-null    int64  
 7   Lower CI                                             180 non-null    float64
 8   Upper CI                                             180 non-null    float64
 9   African Development Bank CPIA                        37 non-null     float64
 10  Bertelsmann Foundation Sustainable Governance Index  41 non-null     float64
 11  Bertelsmann Foundation Transformation Index          137 non-null    float64
 12  Economist Intelligence Unit Country Ratings          131 non-null    float64
 13  Freedom House Nations in Transit                     29 non-null     float64
 14  Global Insights Country Risk Ratings                 180 non-null    int64  
 15  IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook                   64 non-null     float64
 16  PERC Asia Risk Guide                                 15 non-null     float64
 17  PRS International Country Risk Guide                 139 non-null    float64
 18  Varieties of Democracy Project                       175 non-null    float64
 19  World Bank CPIA                                      67 non-null     float64
 20  World Economic Forum EOS                             130 non-null    float64
 21  World Justice Project Rule of Law Index              136 non-null    float64
dtypes: float64(15), int64(4), object(3)
memory usage: 31.1+ KB
Country / Territory ISO3 Region CPI score 2021 Rank Standard error Number of sources Lower CI Upper CI African Development Bank CPIA ... Economist Intelligence Unit Country Ratings Freedom House Nations in Transit Global Insights Country Risk Ratings IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook PERC Asia Risk Guide PRS International Country Risk Guide Varieties of Democracy Project World Bank CPIA World Economic Forum EOS World Justice Project Rule of Law Index
0 Denmark DNK WE/EU 88 1 1.850507 8 84.95592 91.04408 NaN ... 90.0 NaN 83 93.0 NaN 100.0 79.0 NaN 78.0 87.0
1 Finland FIN WE/EU 88 1 1.248280 8 85.94658 90.05342 NaN ... 90.0 NaN 83 94.0 NaN 93.0 77.0 NaN 91.0 87.0
2 New Zealand NZL AP 88 1 1.427644 8 85.65153 90.34847 NaN ... 90.0 NaN 83 91.0 NaN 93.0 78.0 NaN 85.0 83.0
3 Norway NOR WE/EU 85 4 1.072085 7 83.23642 86.76358 NaN ... 90.0 NaN 83 81.0 NaN 85.0 78.0 NaN NaN 87.0
4 Singapore SGP AP 85 4 1.159654 9 83.09237 86.90763 NaN ... 90.0 NaN 83 87.0 91.0 85.0 78.0 NaN 91.0 84.0

5 rows × 22 columns

(180, 3)
Country      0
CPI Score    0
Pos.         0
dtype: int64
15
{'Cabo Verde': ['Cape Verde', 'Macao'],
 'Congo': ['Republic of Congo', 'Tonga'],
 "Cote d'Ivoire": ["Côte d'Ivoire", 'Cape Verde'],
 'Czechia': ['Czech Republic'],
 'Eswatini': ['Swaziland', 'Palestine'],
 'Gambia': ['The Gambia', 'Guam'],
 'Guinea Bissau': ['Guinea-Bissau', 'Nauru'],
 'Korea, North': ['North Korea', 'South Korea'],
 'Korea, South': ['South Korea', 'North Korea'],
 'Laos': ['Lao PDR'],
 'Maldives': [],
 'Mauritius': ['Nauru', 'Saint-Martin'],
 'Sao Tome and Principe': ['São Tomé and Principe', 'San Marino'],
 'Seychelles': [],
 'United States of America': ['United States', 'Isle of Man']}

Worldwide Results¶

CPI (2021) by Transparency International
Pos. Country CPI Score
1 Denmark 88
1 Finland 88
1 New Zealand 88
4 Norway 85
4 Singapore 85
4 Sweden 85
7 Switzerland 84
8 Netherlands 82
9 Luxembourg 81
10 Germany 80
11 United Kingdom 78
12 Hong Kong 76
13 Canada 74
13 Iceland 74
13 Ireland 74
13 Estonia 74
13 Austria 74
18 Australia 73
18 Belgium 73
18 Japan 73
18 Uruguay 73
22 France 71
23 Seychelles 70
24 United Arab Emirates 69
25 Bhutan 68
25 Taiwan 68
27 Chile 67
27 United States 67
29 Barbados 65
30 Bahamas 64
31 Qatar 63
32 South Korea 62
32 Portugal 62
34 Lithuania 61
34 Spain 61
36 Israel 59
36 Latvia 59
36 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 59
39 Cape Verde 58
39 Costa Rica 58
41 Slovenia 57
42 Italy 56
42 Poland 56
42 Saint Lucia 56
45 Botswana 55
45 Dominica 55
45 Fiji 55
45 Georgia 55
49 Czech Republic 54
49 Malta 54
49 Mauritius 54
52 Grenada 53
52 Cyprus 53
52 Rwanda 53
52 Saudi Arabia 53
56 Oman 52
56 Slovakia 52
58 Armenia 49
58 Greece 49
58 Jordan 49
58 Namibia 49
62 Malaysia 48
63 Croatia 47
64 Cuba 46
64 Montenegro 46
66 China 45
66 Romania 45
66 São Tomé and Principe 45
66 Vanuatu 45
70 Jamaica 44
70 South Africa 44
70 Tunisia 44
73 Ghana 43
73 Hungary 43
73 Kuwait 43
73 Senegal 43
73 Solomon Islands 43
78 Bahrain 42
78 Benin 42
78 Burkina Faso 42
78 Bulgaria 42
82 Timor-Leste 41
82 Belarus 41
82 Trinidad and Tobago 41
85 India 40
85 Maldives 40
87 Kosovo 39
87 Colombia 39
87 Ethiopia 39
87 Guyana 39
87 Morocco 39
87 North Macedonia 39
87 Suriname 39
87 Tanzania 39
87 Vietnam 39
96 Argentina 38
96 Brazil 38
96 Indonesia 38
96 Lesotho 38
96 Serbia 38
96 Turkey 38
102 The Gambia 37
102 Kazakhstan 37
102 Sri Lanka 37
105 Côte d'Ivoire 36
105 Ecuador 36
105 Moldova 36
105 Panama 36
105 Peru 36
110 Albania 35
110 Bosnia and Herzegovina 35
110 Malawi 35
110 Mongolia 35
110 Thailand 35
115 El Salvador 34
115 Sierra Leone 34
117 Egypt 33
117 Nepal 33
117 Philippines 33
117 Zambia 33
117 Algeria 33
122 Swaziland 32
122 Ukraine 32
124 Gabon 31
124 Mexico 31
124 Niger 31
124 Papua New Guinea 31
128 Azerbaijan 30
128 Bolivia 30
128 Djibouti 30
128 Dominican Republic 30
128 Lao PDR 30
128 Paraguay 30
128 Togo 30
128 Kenya 30
136 Angola 29
136 Liberia 29
136 Mali 29
136 Russia 29
140 Mauritania 28
140 Myanmar 28
140 Pakistan 28
140 Uzbekistan 28
144 Cameroon 27
144 Kyrgyzstan 27
144 Uganda 27
147 Bangladesh 26
147 Madagascar 26
147 Mozambique 26
150 Guatemala 25
150 Guinea 25
150 Iran 25
150 Tajikistan 25
154 Lebanon 24
154 Nigeria 24
154 Central African Republic 24
157 Cambodia 23
157 Honduras 23
157 Iraq 23
157 Zimbabwe 23
161 Eritrea 22
162 Republic of Congo 21
162 Guinea-Bissau 21
164 Chad 20
164 Comoros 20
164 Haiti 20
164 Nicaragua 20
164 Sudan 20
169 Burundi 19
169 Democratic Republic of the Congo 19
169 Turkmenistan 19
172 Equatorial Guinea 17
172 Libya 17
174 Afghanistan 16
174 North Korea 16
174 Yemen 16
177 Venezuela 14
178 Somalia 13
178 Syria 13
180 South Sudan 11

Map Visualization¶

European Results¶

CPI (2021) European Countries rank by Transparency International
Pos. Country CPI Score
1 Denmark 88
1 Finland 88
3 Norway 85
3 Sweden 85
5 Switzerland 84
6 Netherlands 82
7 Luxembourg 81
8 Germany 80
9 United Kingdom 78
11 Austria 74
11 Estonia 74
11 Iceland 74
11 Ireland 74
14 Belgium 73
15 France 71
16 Portugal 62
17 Spain 61
17 Lithuania 61
19 Latvia 59
20 Slovenia 57
21 Italy 56
21 Poland 56
23 Czech Republic 54
23 Malta 54
25 Slovakia 52
26 Greece 49
27 Croatia 47
28 Montenegro 46
29 Romania 45
30 Hungary 43
31 Bulgaria 42
32 Belarus 41
33 North Macedonia 39
34 Serbia 38
35 Moldova 36
36 Albania 35
36 Bosnia and Herzegovina 35
38 Ukraine 32
39 Russia 29

Map Visualization¶

Combined Results¶

Country Press Index Score Freedom Index Score CPI Score Law Index Score
Abkhazia 40.00
Afghanistan 38.27 10.00 16.00 0.35
Albania 56.41 67.00 35.00 0.49
Algeria 45.53 32.00 33.00 0.49
Andorra 68.79 93.00
Angola 57.17 30.00 29.00 0.43
Antigua and Barbuda 85.00 0.63
Argentina 77.28 84.00 38.00 0.56
Armenia 68.97 55.00 49.00
Australia 73.77 95.00 73.00 0.79
Austria 76.74 93.00 74.00 0.81
Azerbaijan 39.40 9.00 30.00
Bahamas 91.00 64.00 0.61
Bahrain 30.97 12.00 42.00
Bangladesh 36.63 39.00 26.00 0.4
Barbados 95.00 65.00 0.65
Belarus 39.62 8.00 41.00 0.48
Belgium 78.86 96.00 73.00 0.79
Belize 70.67 87.00 0.48
Benin 48.39 59.00 42.00 0.49
Bhutan 76.46 61.00 68.00
Bolivia 47.58 66.00 30.00 0.39
Bosnia and Herzegovina 65.64 53.00 35.00 0.52
Botswana 58.49 72.00 55.00 0.59
Brazil 55.36 73.00 38.00 0.5
Brunei Darussalam 42.53 28.00
Bulgaria 59.12 79.00 42.00 0.54
Burkina Faso 73.12 53.00 42.00 0.5
Burundi 55.74 14.00 19.00
Cambodia 43.48 24.00 23.00 0.32
Cameroon 49.10 15.00 27.00 0.35
Canada 81.74 98.00 74.00 0.8
Cape Verde 75.37 92.00 58.00
Central African Republic 56.96 7.00 24.00
Chad 56.18 15.00 20.00
Chile 60.61 94.00 67.00 0.66
China 25.17 9.00 45.00 0.47
Colombia 42.43 64.00 39.00 0.49
Comoros 60.16 42.00 20.00
Costa Rica 85.92 91.00 58.00 0.68
Crimea 7.00
Croatia 70.42 85.00 47.00 0.61
Cuba 27.32 12.00 46.00
Cyprus 65.97 93.00 53.00 0.68
Czech Republic 80.54 91.00 54.00 0.73
Côte d'Ivoire 74.46 49.00 36.00 0.45
Democratic Republic of the Congo 47.66 19.00 19.00 0.35
Denmark 90.27 97.00 88.00 0.9
Djibouti 35.75 24.00 30.00
Dominica 93.00 55.00 0.58
Dominican Republic 76.90 68.00 30.00 0.48
Eastern Donbas 4.00
Ecuador 64.61 71.00 36.00 0.48
Egypt 30.23 18.00 33.00 0.35
El Salvador 54.09 59.00 34.00 0.48
Equatorial Guinea 43.96 5.00 17.00
Eritrea 19.62 3.00 22.00
Estonia 88.83 94.00 74.00 0.81
Ethiopia 50.53 23.00 39.00 0.41
Federated States of Micronesia 92.00
Fiji 56.91 58.00 55.00
Finland 88.42 100.00 88.00 0.88
France 78.53 89.00 71.00 0.72
Gabon 56.00 21.00 31.00
Gaza Strip 11.00
Georgia 59.30 58.00 55.00 0.61
Germany 82.04 94.00 80.00 0.84
Ghana 67.43 80.00 43.00 0.55
Greece 55.52 87.00 49.00 0.61
Grenada 89.00 53.00 0.59
Guatemala 47.94 51.00 25.00 0.44
Guinea 59.82 34.00 25.00 0.41
Guinea-Bissau 58.79 43.00 21.00
Guyana 76.41 73.00 39.00 0.5
Haiti 64.55 33.00 20.00 0.38
Honduras 34.61 47.00 23.00 0.39
Hong Kong 41.64 43.00 76.00 0.75
Hungary 59.80 69.00 43.00 0.52
Iceland 82.69 94.00 74.00
India 41.00 66.00 40.00 0.5
Indian Kashmir 27.00
Indonesia 49.27 59.00 38.00 0.52
Iran 23.22 14.00 25.00 0.42
Iraq 28.59 29.00 23.00
Ireland 88.30 97.00 74.00 0.81
Israel 59.62 76.00 59.00
Italy 68.16 90.00 56.00 0.66
Jamaica 83.35 80.00 44.00 0.57
Japan 64.37 96.00 73.00 0.79
Jordan 48.66 33.00 49.00 0.55
Kazakhstan 48.28 23.00 37.00 0.52
Kenya 64.59 48.00 30.00 0.44
Kiribati 93.00
Kosovo 67.00 56.00 39.00 0.55
Kuwait 37.87 37.00 43.00
Kyrgyzstan 64.25 27.00 27.00 0.47
Lao PDR 36.64 13.00 30.00
Latvia 79.17 88.00 59.00 0.71
Lebanon 46.58 42.00 24.00 0.45
Lesotho 59.39 63.00 38.00
Liberia 62.77 60.00 29.00 0.44
Libya 43.16 9.00 17.00
Liechtenstein 84.03 90.00
Lithuania 84.14 89.00 61.00 0.75
Luxembourg 79.81 97.00 81.00 0.83
Madagascar 58.02 61.00 26.00 0.44
Malawi 61.40 66.00 35.00 0.52
Malaysia 51.55 50.00 48.00 0.57
Maldives 59.55 40.00 40.00
Mali 54.48 32.00 29.00 0.43
Malta 61.55 89.00 54.00 0.68
Marshall Islands 93.00
Mauritania 58.10 35.00 28.00 0.36
Mauritius 66.07 86.00 54.00 0.61
Mexico 47.57 60.00 31.00 0.43
Moldova 73.47 62.00 36.00 0.51
Monaco 84.00
Mongolia 59.17 84.00 35.00 0.54
Montenegro 66.54 67.00 46.00
Morocco 45.42 37.00 39.00 0.49
Mozambique 49.89 43.00 26.00 0.4
Myanmar 25.03 9.00 28.00 0.39
Nagorno-Karabakh 36.00
Namibia 81.84 77.00 49.00 0.62
Nauru 77.00
Nepal 62.67 57.00 33.00 0.52
Netherlands 77.93 97.00 82.00 0.83
New Zealand 83.54 99.00 88.00 0.83
Nicaragua 37.09 23.00 20.00 0.38
Niger 67.80 51.00 31.00 0.44
Nigeria 46.79 43.00 24.00 0.41
North Korea 13.92 3.00 16.00
North Macedonia 68.44 67.00 39.00 0.53
Northern Cyprus 61.08 77.00
Norway 92.65 100.00 85.00 0.9
OECS 68.49
Oman 35.99 24.00 52.00
Pakistan 37.99 37.00 28.00 0.39
Pakistani Kashmir 29.00
Palau 92.00
Palestine 28.98
Panama 62.78 83.00 36.00 0.52
Papua New Guinea 66.66 62.00 31.00
Paraguay 58.36 65.00 30.00 0.48
Peru 61.75 72.00 36.00 0.49
Philippines 41.84 55.00 33.00 0.46
Poland 65.64 81.00 56.00 0.64
Portugal 87.07 95.00 62.00 0.7
Qatar 49.03 25.00 63.00
Republic of Congo 58.64 17.00 21.00 0.42
Romania 68.46 83.00 45.00 0.63
Russia 38.82 19.00 29.00 0.46
Rwanda 45.18 22.00 53.00 0.62
Saint Kitts and Nevis 89.00 0.63
Saint Lucia 92.00 56.00 0.62
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 91.00 59.00 0.64
Samoa 71.39 83.00
San Marino 93.00
Saudi Arabia 33.71 7.00 53.00
Senegal 63.07 68.00 43.00 0.55
Serbia 61.51 62.00 38.00 0.49
Seychelles 83.33 79.00 70.00
Sierra Leone 71.03 65.00 34.00 0.44
Singapore 44.23 47.00 85.00 0.78
Slovakia 78.37 90.00 52.00 0.66
Slovenia 68.54 90.00 57.00 0.68
Solomon Islands 79.00 43.00
Somalia 44.01 7.00 13.00
Somaliland 49.00
South Africa 75.56 79.00 44.00 0.58
South Korea 72.11 83.00 62.00 0.74
South Ossetia 11.00
South Sudan 47.06 1.00 11.00
Spain 76.71 90.00 61.00 0.73
Sri Lanka 42.13 55.00 37.00 0.5
Sudan 40.96 10.00 20.00 0.42
Suriname 68.95 79.00 39.00 0.49
Swaziland 46.42 17.00 32.00
Sweden 88.84 100.00 85.00 0.86
Switzerland 82.72 96.00 84.00
Syria 28.94 1.00 13.00
São Tomé and Principe 84.00 45.00
Taiwan 74.08 94.00 68.00
Tajikistan 40.26 8.00 25.00
Tanzania 48.28 34.00 39.00 0.47
Thailand 50.15 29.00 35.00 0.5
The Gambia 69.25 47.00 37.00 0.49
Tibet 1.00
Timor-Leste 81.89 72.00 41.00
Togo 57.17 42.00 30.00 0.45
Tonga 69.74 79.00
Transnistria 18.00
Trinidad and Tobago 78.68 82.00 41.00 0.53
Tunisia 58.49 64.00 44.00 0.53
Turkey 41.25 32.00 38.00 0.42
Turkmenistan 25.01 2.00 19.00
Tuvalu 93.00
Uganda 46.35 34.00 27.00 0.39
Ukraine 55.76 61.00 32.00 0.51
United Arab Emirates 44.46 17.00 69.00 0.64
United Kingdom 78.71 93.00 78.00 0.79
United States 72.74 83.00 67.00 0.69
Uruguay 72.03 97.00 73.00 0.71
Uzbekistan 45.74 11.00 28.00 0.49
Vanuatu 82.00 45.00
Venezuela 37.78 14.00 14.00 0.27
Vietnam 26.11 19.00 39.00 0.49
West Bank 23.00
Western Sahara 45.42 4.00
Yemen 29.14 9.00 16.00
Zambia 55.40 51.00 33.00 0.44
Zimbabwe 44.94 28.00 23.00 0.39
Country Press Index Score Freedom Index Score CPI Score Law Index Score
Albania 56.41 67.00 35.00 0.49
Andorra 68.79 93.00
Austria 76.74 93.00 74.00 0.81
Belarus 39.62 8.00 41.00 0.48
Belgium 78.86 96.00 73.00 0.79
Bosnia and Herzegovina 65.64 53.00 35.00 0.52
Bulgaria 59.12 79.00 42.00 0.54
Croatia 70.42 85.00 47.00 0.61
Czech Republic 80.54 91.00 54.00 0.73
Denmark 90.27 97.00 88.00 0.9
Estonia 88.83 94.00 74.00 0.81
Finland 88.42 100.00 88.00 0.88
France 78.53 89.00 71.00 0.72
Germany 82.04 94.00 80.00 0.84
Greece 55.52 87.00 49.00 0.61
Hungary 59.80 69.00 43.00 0.52
Iceland 82.69 94.00 74.00
Ireland 88.30 97.00 74.00 0.81
Italy 68.16 90.00 56.00 0.66
Latvia 79.17 88.00 59.00 0.71
Liechtenstein 84.03 90.00
Lithuania 84.14 89.00 61.00 0.75
Luxembourg 79.81 97.00 81.00 0.83
Malta 61.55 89.00 54.00 0.68
Moldova 73.47 62.00 36.00 0.51
Montenegro 66.54 67.00 46.00
Netherlands 77.93 97.00 82.00 0.83
North Macedonia 68.44 67.00 39.00 0.53
Norway 92.65 100.00 85.00 0.9
Poland 65.64 81.00 56.00 0.64
Portugal 87.07 95.00 62.00 0.7
Romania 68.46 83.00 45.00 0.63
Russia 38.82 19.00 29.00 0.46
Serbia 61.51 62.00 38.00 0.49
Slovakia 78.37 90.00 52.00 0.66
Slovenia 68.54 90.00 57.00 0.68
Spain 76.71 90.00 61.00 0.73
Sweden 88.84 100.00 85.00 0.86
Switzerland 82.72 96.00 84.00
Ukraine 55.76 61.00 32.00 0.51
United Kingdom 78.71 93.00 78.00 0.79